As farming practices have changed, so have the weed control methods. The increased uptake of conservation farming practices—including minimum-till and no-till practices—has seen an increase in herbicide (and other types of pesticides) usage for the control of weeds, and this increase in usage is causing selective breeding of tolerance characteristics (also known as “resistance” in the farming industry) to the herbicide in successive generations. Currently, the standard technique for breaking this tolerance is to use a herbicide with a different killing action (which is often more expensive than the herbicides already being used) and/or mechanical cultivation. Typically, the herbicide is applied with a boom sprayer that either sprays herbicide in a broadcast manner on both the weeds and the crops or is focused such that the herbicide is only applied in the area between the crop rows. In either method, the herbicide is sprayed continually across the field.
One alternative cost efficient way to apply the different, more costly “specific action” or “selective” herbicides is through automatic spot spraying of the weeds. However, current commercial spot spraying technologies are only capable of recognizing the presence of vegetation (distinguishing plants from background such as soil or stubble)—the technologies do not have the ability to identify the specific vegetation and thus can't distinguish weed plants from crop plants. Further, additional experimental technologies have been developed for controlled conditions and consequently are not suitable to achieve a workable commercial solution.
There is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for real-time object identification, including real-time plant species identification.